Asia

In September 2021, a video showing the simultaneous demolition of 15 high-rise buildings in China went viral. The buildings which had remained unfinished were demolished in 45 seconds, much like the dreams of scores of home buyers in China who are today undertaking mortgage boycotts to express their anger at not getting possession of their dwelling units on time. This crisis comes at a time when official data shows that China’s economic growth has slowed sharply in the second quarter of the year, highlighting the colossal impact of the countrywide Covid lockdowns and casting doubt on whether its pre-ordained growth target can be met. China’s economy is also facing fresh risks from an unfolding mortgage boycott quickly spreading across the country. Data released by the Statistics Bure...

Chinese commercial banks face mounting non-performing assets that has the potential to undermine the economy. At the close of the second quarter of the year, the balance of NPAs of commercial banks was 2.95 trillion yuan. The non-performing loan ratio was 1.67 per cent. In the first half of the year, manufacturing loans increased by 3.3 trillion yuan, an increase of 1.6 trillion yuan year-on-year, of which high-tech manufacturing loans increased by 28.9% year-on-year. In the first half of the year, “the disposal of non-performing assets was 1.41 trillion yuan, an increase of 219.7 billion yuan year-on-year”. According to media repeports, entrusted loans and trust loans “fell by 380.6 billion yuan in the first half of this year. The CBIRC will “continue to strictly prevent the reboun...

Beijing, China:According to the National Bureau of Statistics in China, the data on Friday showed that the economy expanded 0.4 per cent from a year earlier in the second quarter, worse than some economists’ expectations and the slowest growth since the first three months of 2020.Notably, 2020 was a year when China effectively shut down the market to fight the early stages of the pandemic, and its economy shrank for the first time in 28 years, The New York Times reported.Unemployment, the housing market and small businesses are still a mess.“China is the shoe that has never dropped in the global economy,” said Kenneth Rogoff, a professor of economics at Harvard University and a former chief economist for the International Monetary Fund.“China is in no position to be the global engine of g...

ISLAMABAD: The issue of reopening of the purchase agreements of the power generation plants set up under the multi-billion dollar CPEC is unlikely to die down in the near future. The previous PTI government had also made a similar commitment with another global lender – the World Bank (WB) – for the sake of a $400 million loan in June last year. The assurance to seek concessions from the Chinese investors was given by Pakistani authorities to remove one of the bottlenecks in finalisation of a staff-level agreement with the IMF, government sources told The Express Tribune. They added that Pakistan had informed the global lender that it would try to renegotiate the CPEC deals. However, the chances of that happening are dim because of the political sensitivities involved in the proc...

Islamabad, Pakistan:  Pakistan has assured International Monitory Fund (IMF) to receive concessions from the ongoing project of China-Pakistan Economic corridor.   The issue of reopening of the purchase agreements of the power generation plants set up under the multi-billion dollar CPEC is unlikely to die down in the near future. The previous Imran Khan-led PTI government ha made a similar commitment with the World Bank (WB) – for the sake of a USD 400 million loan in June last year. Citing government sources, The Express Tribune reported that the assurance to seek concessions from the Chinese investors was given by Pakistani authorities to remove one of the bottlenecks in finalisation of a staff-level agreement with the IMF. Notably, the chances of that happenin...

In its 2022 strategic concept, NATO notes that as a “systemic challenge”, China has been exploiting politico-military, economic and diplomatic tools for its power projection and greater regional and global presence. The paper also takes note of China’s hybrid and cyber overt and covert operations premised on its mala fide intentions, which often run counter to its calls for peaceful co-existence and “win-win” foreign policy rhetoric. Along with its island reclamation and militarisation activities, China is increasingly using maritime militia to dominate the South China Sea. It is rapidly equipping itself with anti-access/area denial (A2/AD) capabilities in its so-called first island chain which includes Okinawa (Japan), Taiwan, and the Philippines within the wider East and South China ...

China's textile manufacturing industry, which is the largest in the world and accounts for 7 per cent of the country's GDP, is in a downward spiral. The Covid-19 pandemic proved the major reason for the demand to go down besides the increase in raw materials. There are gloomy days ahead as China is losing its space in textile imports to other Asian countries like Vietnam and India. However, things are going to get much worse as the UK and US banned cotton imports amid allegations of forced labour in China’s Xinjiang even as the European Union is mulling a similar move. There has been a massive loss to the textile industry in China since 2020 while the demand in 2022 has lowered by 40 per cent from the last year.[2] After the Uyghur Forced Labour Prevention Act (UFLPA) came into force, ...

The overall Pakistani internal security situation seems to be deteriorating. Decades of social and institutional apathy towards vulnerable comminutes, hatred for minorities, discrimination based on region and subtle promotion of extremism have gradually resulted in widespread militancy and lawlessness making the administration challenging across the country. The problem gets further exacerbated with the rise of criminal gangs at local levels, which further jeopardizes the development and peaceful existence of the society. When an all-weather ally China is consistently seen flagging security concerns regarding projects under China Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC), the situation cannot be considered normal. Repeated Chinese requests and warnings to Pak government for giving priority to ...

The US-China competition is getting intense with each passing day, with China having fast-emerged as a systemic rival to both the US and other members of NATO (North Atlantic Treaty Organization). This is evident from NATO’s 2022 Strategic Concept approved at NATO’s Summit in Madrid on 29 June. Although, according to some reports, the US and the UK hold much stronger views on China compared to Germany, France and the EU, the strategic concept itself has taken a giant qualitative leap forward in comparison to its previous avatar launched in 2010, which did not even mention China as a cause of concern for NATO and its allies. In its 2022 strategic concept, NATO notes that as a “systemic challenge”, China has been exploiting politico-military, economic and diplomatic tools for its pow...

The prolonged Ukraine – Russia conflict is hurting the very fundamentals of poorcountries, especially countries like Pakistan. An analysts in JP Morgan Chase &Co. warned recently that global oil prices could reach a ‘stratospheric’ levels if theUS and European penalties prompt Russia to inflict retaliatory crude-output cuts.A daily cut of 3 million-barrel in supplies would push benchmark London crudeprices to USD 190, while the worst-case scenario of 5 million could mean USD380 a barrel, said the analyst. This would push Islamabad to a scenario muchworse than the current crisis that Colombo is facing. Islamabad is currentlyexperiencing worst energy crisis even when the oil prices are hovering above USD100 a barrel. The crisis deepened further with the State-owned Pakistan LNG Ltdscrap...